Pentagon Taps Crowdsourcing to Chart Future Threats

In a story just posted in the online edition of Time Magazine
wrote...

said late Thursday that it’s seeking a “crowd-sourcing entity,” mostly likely a contractor, to chart “the types of future challenges to
national security for which the President of the United States would expect U.S. armed forces to have the ability to address.”

The Pentagon wants the winning bidder to brainstorm online with “a large and diverse group of people collaborating in real time” to improve how
the nation prepares for, and fights, its wars.

Basically what they want is people like you and me... Folks who read and take in everything who can see patterns and make educated guesses as to what
they might mean.

it relies on a constellation of thousands or more individuals, often unpaid, who funnel their ideas into a central clearinghouse, where the
optimum ones supposedly float to the surface.

As a side note to the TPTB here at ATS...

If you’re interested in helping hone the nation’s future war-fighting environment, you’d better get cracking. The Pentagon is seeking a
three-year deal beginning next month, and the deadline to apply is Sept. 4.

They go on to say that the Pentagon has used """"crowdsourcing"""" as they call it... on a much more limited scale, to design a next-gen
combat vehicle. I hate to think of what that new 'Designed By Committee' vehicle looks like... Prob the only tank on the market with a bud vase and
built in aroma therapy dispensers???

Well anyway... if the went to Time Magazine with this, then they must be serious and given the demographics of Time readers.... their looking for a
certain kind of person to help out with this project.

go read the story... there's more facts there about what they hope to achieve

Actually it's not necessarily a born to lose proposition.
The military doesn't tend to solve small non-mission critical problems easily. They just sit there for generations- the problems actually become part
of military culture- almost a point of pride or at least a hardship that brings the group together for the grunts who have to live with it. God knows
just how many small components of the Marine Corps are being held together entirely by boot bands and medical tape because nobody bothered to rethink
a small problem with an otherwise effective tool. So there's always gonna be one guy in the unit who just can't drink from his canteen while in MOPP
(chem suit) for example. But you can bet that there's somebody at Coca Cola who could come up with something better overnight if he thought it would
sell a few million extra cans and get him a raise.

All the military really has to do is throw out the ideas that aren't fully formed, and then cost-benefit the remaining ones, and god knows how many
small sources of battlefield friction might be eliminated as a result.

I agree with you...
often the solution to a prob is found by someone who's standing outside of and has different prospective.
Yet I do wonder how far their willing to go as a partner in this.

if we look at part (b.)

b. Generate innovative scenarios that present pathways to a crisis or conflict that is antithetical to U.S. national security interests.
Scenarios will provide a narrative description that captures a representative potential future national security challenge and includes the following
key elements: identity of key actors, their interests and objectives, primary drivers to conflict and rationale for key actors’ decision-making and
actions, key capabilities they could use in a crisis or conflict, description of representative activities they would take (i.e., the manner in which
they would use their capabilities to achieve their objectives), and role of third parties. Scenarios should remain within the bounds of
plausibility.

that part where they want """key elements: identity of key actors""" etc...

That's the kind of intel people like us normally do not have access too.
Surely that would require some kind of disclosure on their part declassification of intel briefs... I mean you couldn't expect all the unpaid
volunteers to get a 'Q' clearance. that would delay the start up date considerably if not make the project untenable altogether.

I agree with you...
often the solution to a prob is found by someone who's standing outside of and has different prospective.
Yet I do wonder how far their willing to go as a partner in this.

if we look at part (b.)

b. Generate innovative scenarios that present pathways to a crisis or conflict that is antithetical to U.S. national security interests.
Scenarios will provide a narrative description that captures a representative potential future national security challenge and includes the following
key elements: identity of key actors, their interests and objectives, primary drivers to conflict and rationale for key actors’ decision-making and
actions, key capabilities they could use in a crisis or conflict, description of representative activities they would take (i.e., the manner in which
they would use their capabilities to achieve their objectives), and role of third parties. Scenarios should remain within the bounds of
plausibility.

that part where they want """key elements: identity of key actors""" etc...

That's the kind of intel people like us normally do not have access too.
Surely that would require some kind of disclosure on their part declassification of intel briefs... I mean you couldn't expect all the unpaid
volunteers to get a 'Q' clearance. that would delay the start up date considerably if not make the project untenable altogether.

it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out.

And on the other side, they could be so distracted with the events in the Middle East that they don't see the border confrontation between two
African countries over Tellurium crystal mines that have suddenly become worth billions because they are used for the latest fondleslab phones.

I've seen systems designed by committee. They basically maintain a set of requirements some of which are fixed, others which vary as the project
evolves, many of which conflict. They want a vehicle that can travel over sand, water, mud, climb over obstacles, have a maximum speed of 60mpgh,
withstand RPG grenades, be able to carry 20+ people, defend itself from air attack, use standard engines and fuel, be able to be carried in a Hercules
transport plane, be light enough to drift down by parachute.

So the initial list of possible vehicles ranges from a bullet-proof monocycle to a Star-Wars dune-crawler, but eventually narrows down to something
between a cross of a beach-buggy with roll-bars to a 100-tonne Abrams tank with jet engines.

You're right, that's fishy. It seems very un-fed-like to outsource intelligence to the unwashed masses.
My shot from the hip is that it's a psy-op. They want to know what we find credible and worrying so they can get us to play ball with their own
agenda on the things they actually perceive as threats without actually being told what's going on.

I know you're joking but trade that in for an offroad capable Toyota pickup and you actually do have a fighting platform capable of being used by any
average joe who knows the local terrain to rout a soviet equipped regular army. It worked for Chad against Libya in the Toyota War.

I've thought for some time that it wouldn't be a bad idea for the US to keep a backline force of cheap low tech, mission specific options that can be
loaned to allies or deployed by militia at home if ever needed as a suppliment to the shrinking and increasingly sophisticated all purpose forces that
they envision as the way of the future.

One such idea would be a hovercraft conversion kit for a commonly available light vehicle (I figured out during an episode of junk yard wars that all
you would need is some old industrial conveyor belts, a sawzall, some ducting, a fan blade, a radiator repositioning kit, and an adapter to bolt on to
the water pump to connect the fan, and bam, you have a humvee fleet that can be ready to cross a river at any point with just a couple hours down time
to reconfigure.

I'm sure there are engineering problems I'm missing there, but they'd be considerably less expensive than other projects the military happily takes on
with no guarantee they will be used, and you could add an awful lot of wildcards to the deck that would make the US military much less predictable in
any scenaro.

“
The Marine Corps is engaged in an acquisition program to develop a Tactical Unmanned Ground Vehicle in order to provide the Marine Air-Ground Task
Force (MAGTF) with a tele-operated/semi-autonomous ground vehicle for remoting combat tasks in order to reduce risk to Marines and neutralize threats.
The Gladiator is designed principally to support dismounted infantry during the performance of their mission, across the spectrum of conflict and
range of military operations. The primary function of the Gladiator will be to provide the Ground Combat Element (GCE) with unmanned scouting and
reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition (RSTA). Operating forward of GCE units, the Gladiator will perform scouting and reconnaissance
tasks while permitting the operator to remain covered and concealed some distance away. Additional functions of the Gladiator system will be to
utilize a modular configuration capable of employing the Anti-Personnel/Obstacle Breaching System (APOBS), M240G/M249 Machine Guns, and currently
fielded chemical detection systems. With the development of future Mission Payload Modules (MPM), projected operational capabilities include:
obscurant delivery; direct fire (lethal and non-lethal); communications relay; tactical deception (electronic and acoustic); combat resupply; casualty
evacuation, or counter sniper employment. These modules will allow commanders to increase their operational capability by tailoring the capabilities
of the Gladiator to best meet their mission requirements.”

ETA: The Gladiator was from back in my day...2006... god only knows what way cool--- and truly insidious devices they've come up with nowadays...
Damn are we humans good at finding new and better ways to kill each other or what?

Aye but those are man sized power armor not 40ft tall robots. I do think that something the size of the cyclones would be a benefit on the battle
field, heck it gives you a ride with the bike and protection when its in armor mode, win/win. Now it would only truly work if they could make them as
agile as the operator, otherwise you would be a sitting duck. I will admit it has been interesting to see the development of machines the past 12
years. Autonomous robots, still does not completely sit well with me. There is just to much room for error with hackers and what not.

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